Kinetic

"Oh Eric! I wasn't thinking of the amount! I'm thinking of what you did with it! What were you thinking of?!"

"Uh gee, I don't know. I was just playing, I guess..."

Melanie stared at me. I smiled back. After a moment Melanie finally smiled back at me. "Playing at being a god, huh? Well, I guess you succeeded... How many bowling balls are we talking about?"

"Uh, thirty thousand exactly...." I didn't remind her that they are a little bigger than bowling balls, more like a beach ball. The density of diamond is 3.52 grams/cc, and each one of my perfect diamond spheres weighted exactly 100 kg. Each sphere had a radius of 18.9 cm.

At my power and force levels, it was incredibly easy to pull the carbon from the CO2 and fuse them into diamond spheres. I collected the carbon atoms directly above me, almost at the edge of my sense sphere. After I had formed each diamond sphere, I hit it with a force of 1.8e13 Newtons for 16.7 microseconds. In that time, it would travel 25 meters and be accelerated to 1% of the speed of light. I had a cycle going every 33.3 microseconds, half the time to fuse a perfect sphere, and the second half to accelerate it away from Earth. And I kept that up for one full second.

End result? I had created a line of 30,000 100-kg diamond spheres, spaced 100 meters apart, traveling in a line 3,000 kilometers long. I had fired a one-second burst of diamonds into infinity.

"Eric! What were you thinking of?!"

"Oh gee pumpkin. I was just playing. I don't think anyone will notice."

"You don't huh? I think I did. There was a tremendous high-level flash of lightning just about that time. I think millions probably noticed it."

"Oh yeah, that... I don't think I did the electron compensation quite right. I know how to fix that. It won't happen again."

"That's just great!" Melanie was still looking at me with a shocked expression. I went to her and hugged her. After a moment she turned playful and she hugged me back. "What made you do it sweetie? Why bowling balls?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was thinking of a Gatling gun, I guess. It just felt so cool, opening up on the universe like that with my diamond cannon!"

"I bet..." She kissed me. "Any chance of getting them back?"

"Huh? No... Once they left my sense sphere, they've booked..."

"Could they fall back into the sun?"

"Oh, don't worry about that. The energy to lift 1 kg of matter out of Earth's gravity well from the surface is about 66 mega-Joules. The energy to lift 1 kg of matter out of the sun's gravity well from Earth's orbital position is 880 mega-Joules. These puppies are traveling at 1% of the speed of light, 4.5e12 Joules per kilogram. They have a well-paid ticket to infinity."

Melanie hugged me and then started to giggle. "Well, I guess we should hope there are no Fergeni starships out there for real. One of them gets hit with a broadside of 30,000 diamond cannon balls, they are going to be royally pissed."

I chuckled. "Yeah... For real though Melanie, I tested a way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. If I had kept up my firing for one hour, I would have reduced the CO2 in my sense sphere from 350 to 308 ppm."

Melanie turned very thoughtful. "Wow... You could really start cleaning the planet..."

"Melanie, I can do this in my sleep. If I traveled around the globe and did this for a year non-stop, I could take Earth's CO2 down to 285 ppm, back to where it was before the industrial revolution. I could clean up the centuries of CO2 pollution. Maybe start to get rid of the other gunk too. It would only take a year... I could make the Earth beautiful again..."

"Gosh... my gosh... Something to think about..."

"Yeah..."

Chapter 26.

Time: Thursday, June 28, 2007 6:40 PM

Melanie gave me a beaming smile. "Ah, a great dinner sweetie, as usual. And I really liked the floral pattern on the plates tonight."

I smiled and nodded. "Okay to clear then?"

"Sure."

A second later all the dirty dishes and utensils at our table disappeared, gone from the universe forever. Melanie asked for some music. I locked her selection from our collection and duplicated the CD in the player. Talk about instant requests! I had the music going before she finished describing it.

It's brutally hot outside, the third day in a row the temperature got over 100F. Our condo is delightfully cool of course, 66F. And it would be so easy to pull some serious heat from the great outdoors. At maximum pull, I could drop the temperature of the entire dome of atmosphere in my sense-sphere, all 9e14 kg of it in my 105.5 mile radius. I could drop it 123C in a single second.

Of course, that would be mass murder, but the idea of just taking the edge off the heat is tempting. Melanie talked me out of it. We still are nowhere near deciding how to interface my powers with humanity's needs, and until we do we have decided I shouldn't intervene overtly.

Which isn't always the case. We've also agreed that I can use my spare power to zap pollutants in the region's aquifers, making the nasty stuff disappear at a rate of 1292 kg per second. Over the last two months, all those seconds have added up. I've removed some serious mega-tonnage of crud from the air and water table. I've got the coordinates of hundreds of landfills locked in my mind. I usually work them simultaneously, from the bottom. Less noticeable that way...

My wife and I went to the living room to hear the music better. "You all packed?" I asked as we sat down on the couch.

"I guess. I've got my passport and the plane tickets; that's for sure. And you can whip me up anything I've forgotten..."

Melanie looked very thoughtful as we held each other. Eventually I asked, "Having second thoughts about the trip?"

Melanie shook her head no and rested her head against me. But she knew the deep meaning of my question.

Early tomorrow we'll be catching an overnight flight to France. It's time for our yearly trip with Melanie's parents and sister, and we'll all be spending a week together in Paris.

The trip is a good fit for Melanie's schedule and a perfect fit for mine. I've got my Masters from M.I.T. a month ago, but my research grant lasted until the end of June and I've spent the extra month just playing with some interesting engineering problems with my thesis advisor and having a great time. The Paris trip will be over the Fourth of July week, and then Monday, July 9'th I start working for a small engineering firm on Glenwood Avenue in Cambridge. It's less than a mile from my old dorm and less than two miles from our home. My starting salary is $69k, a bit on the low end of the offers I got, but the work is in energy resource management, something I love, and the hours are very flexible and my boss is a really nice guy. And it's so close to home and being with Melanie! I'm very happy with the offer.

It might seem odd with my abilities, but I do normal commutes. Melanie and I have decided to be very, very careful about how we use my ability to become invisible and zip around the planet. With all the surveillance cameras around, I don't want to take a chance and leaving evidence of me being in multiple places at almost the same time. So Melanie and I sometimes "cloak" and spend our evenings at our second home in the Allagash, but otherwise we keep completely normal travel arrangements.

Our home in the Allagash is really nice, by the way. With the ability to create or destroy matter at a rate of 1293 kg per second, it didn't take long to create a cozy palace carved into a rock ledge, complete with fully functional power, water, and a sewer system that flushes straight into oblivion, as long as I'm on site. Melanie thought I went just a bit "over the top" with the opulence, but I figured, what the hell. The multi-media theater is really something...

Over the last three months, we searched the news for any hint of a sighting of my cosmic bowling balls. I guess I lucked out. They would have crossed the orbit of Pluto three weeks after being launched, and I doubt that even the best telescopes could see them now. I had fired them after sundown, down the shadow cone of the Earth. They didn't see sunlight until they were well passed the orbit of the moon, about three seconds after launch.

They are brilliantly clear and glasslike, and without facets don't have the typical sparkle of diamonds. But they do refract light like crazy, and Melanie is right. It was a totally unnecessary risk.

Melanie stirred on my shoulder. "I called the Bursar Office today. The check for next year's tuition cleared."

"Ah, that's good... Melanie, we really have so little to worry about. Don't go to Paris for the tuition money."

"Oh, I know. Stable debt, $17,000 in blue money, more green cash than we'll ever spend, and you'll have a nice paycheck in a month. Life is good... But my mind keeps drifting though to Paris, and the yacht last year..." Melanie leaned up and kissed me. "But I think our plan is correct Eric. If I know my parents, they'll want to spend lots of time with me and leave you alone with Patricia, which will fit our plan perfectly. Dearest?"

"Hmmm?"

"I trust you, 100%. Never worry about the appearance of... uh... delicate situations. I really do trust you."

I nodded and buried my nose in Melanie's hair, butting her gently and kissing back by her ear.

"Oh! By the way, I got a peek at the report on the virus samples you substituted. Fully viable. You can do it Eric, create life."

"Ah... Even the smallpox sample?"

"Yep."

As part of some research into infectious diseases, Harvard had received some very small samples of killer viruses. Melanie and I talked about added an experiment of our own. I locked the viruses and committed their sequences into my kinetic memory, which seems to have an unlimited ability to remember details. Then I destroyed the samples, and recreated them a few seconds later.

The polio virus was the simplest. Its DNA series was only 4,741 code units long. Then there was Ebola (18,959 codes) and Marburg (19,112 codes), and a few common cold samples for controls (the corona viruses, those were just shy of 30,000 codes). The big test was the smallpox virus, 185,578 code units of DNA. It was no problem to duplicate. Melanie has asked me to promise to try with bacteria within a few months...

I know what she's after. I guess I should be after it too, but I'm so afraid of playing god with life. Melanie though has a vision of her future with a child patient with incurable cancer. Incurable by normal means, that is...

Time: Thursday, July 5, 2007 7 PM local time

Well, it's been an interesting vacation, and extremely hot! Paris has been almost as bad as Boston, but the people here are so much less prepared for the heat. Our rooms at the Chateau we're staying don't even have air conditioning. It was over 90F in the rooms last night, and with the high humidity absolutely brutal for sleeping. No problem for Melanie and me, of course. No way I could resist locking our two bodies and setting up a slow drain for the heat.

It's a strange but not unpleasant feeling. We can sense the heat at our skin, but we're delightfully cool inside. Imagine walking into a very warm room after freezing outside. My wife and I are having a wonderful time, and are just ignoring the odd looks from people who wonder why we aren't sweating.

Paris is a beautiful city, is spite of the heat. And Melanie speaks much better French than I realized. We've spent two solid days at the Louvre, and my wife wants to go back for a third. I totally agree. The museum is fascinating.

The city is ridiculously expensive though. Forty euros for Patricia and me to have a couple of baguettes and small bottles of water at an outdoor café?! I argued with the proprietor for several minutes, thinking he had confused us with some other bill. But no. Ah well. I've gone back to the Allagash twice for more walking-around money. Nothing like free cash to take the sting out of being fleeced...

Melanie has been super sweet about Patricia and me. Patricia has been eager to have some one-on-one time with me, both parents have been asking Melanie to come with them on side trips while leaving Patricia out, and it all suites our interests fine. Melanie has complete trust in me, and is genuinely curious and supportive of my effort to develop a friendship with her sister.

This evening is a prime example. The parents invited Melanie to join them in an evening dinner cruise down the Seine on the Bateaux-Mouches. Patricia begged off, saying the heat was just too much for her, and she and I have a plan to hang around the hotel swimming pool.

There was a knock at my door. I called out hello, and Patricia entered, wearing a swimsuit and sandals and carrying a large beach towel.

"You're not going to believe this! They've closed the pool! There's a sign saying the bacteria content is too high."

"Oh wow..." I looked at Patricia in sympathy. Her body looked really stressed out by the heat. "Want to go for a walk?"

"Maybe in a bit. Could I just sit down for a moment? I'm so tired."

"Sure! Here, I'll get you some ice water."

Patricia laid her towel on a large couch to protect the fabric, and then just sat down and collapsed. She smiled gratefully when I gave her the drink a moment later. "Thanks! I don't know how you and Melanie always look so cool. This city is a sauna!"

"Yeah, pretty brutal. It hit 40C this afternoon..."

"I'm not surprised... Funny though, it doesn't feel too bad in here... definitely better than my room anyway."

I was puzzled by her comment for a moment, and then I remembered a few minutes before Patricia showed up, I was so unhappy with my soggy environment that I zapped into oblivion all the water vapor in my room's air. "Uh, yeah... I had the window open. There was a bit of a breeze..."

"Really? That's funny... My room faces the same direction. I got nothing.... Oh hell Eric! Could we put off our walk for awhile? I'm feeling exhausted."

"Sure. Want to lie down on the couch? I could put on some music."

"Wow, what a great idea... Thanks..." She kicked off her sandals, repositioned her towel and lay down while I put on something light and classical. I came back and sat in a chair nearby with my own drink. Patricia gave me a kind smile. "Sorry I'm not being better company..."

I made a dismissive hand gesture and looked at her. She really did look exhausted and suffering from the heat. "So Eric, how are you liking Paris?"

"It's nice! Sure is different than the U.S. Too bad about the heat. The museums though are wonderful."

"Yeah..." Patricia tried to say something and then stopped herself. "Oh, I am so hot," she mumbled.

In a wave of compassion I reached out with my sense and locked her body.

It's an incredibly intimate act, and something I've only done with Melanie and my own body before. In an instant I knew thousands of things about Patricia's physical life, her blood chemistry, how tense the muscles in her back where, the stress of the heat on her body. It all came flooding in, dental hygiene, her slight cramp from eating something at dinner she didn't like... I sensed the faint scar tissue in her uterus, and realized with a start she probably once had an abortion. I didn't mean my probe to be so nosey. Locking just automatically sets up a fantastic information flow.

Once locked, I set up a slow heat drain on her body, one milli-degree C per second. I wanted her to cool off slowly. I also took pity on how tense her muscles were. "Uh, Patricia. Would you like a back rub?"

She blinked her eyes wide. "Wow! Yes, I'd love one! I think... You don't think Melanie would mind?"

"Oh no," I said, getting up and kneeling by the side of the couch. I used some force to take the weight off my knees, making it a very comfortable position. "Melanie and I have talked about this beforehand. She's quite happy for you and me to spend some time together." I began working the muscles in Patricia's upper back. Her back and neck were a mass of knots. This would take a while.

"Really?" replied Patricia. "Gee, that was... that was nice of her. My parents thought I'd like spending some time with you too, but they thought they'd have to work to pull Melanie away from you."

"Yes. We know."

"You do?"

"Yes, we do..."

"Oh.... And Melanie really doesn't mind?"

"No. She really doesn't mind."

Patricia was silent for a while, stirring slightly as she got comfortable on the couch. I stepped up her heat sink just a bit and worked my way up to her shoulders and neck muscles. Her swimsuit had a bare back, and I started working the vertebrae at the top of her backbone. "How's this feel?"

"Hmmm?" Patricia opened her eyes. "It feels delightful. This is the very first time anyone's ever rubbed my back."

"My gosh... Really?"

"Yeah... My parents love me, but they don't pet me. And I haven't taken your advice yet from last year. I'm still not dating anybody. I haven't been petted..." she sighed, "my gosh... not since high school... It's been nine years..."

"That's too long Patricia..." I dropped from her neck back to her shoulder blades, kneading the muscles a little more fiercely now that they started to unwind.

Patricia nodded. "I'm beginning to realize that... But high school was never like this... This feels heavenly... High school was making out in back seats of cars, being pressured to produce, to have sex... It was nothing like this... This feels so gentle... Eric?"

"Uh huh?"

She said nothing at first. She just bent her knees back and stretched out her bare feet in the open air. I gazed at her for a while as I felt her relax.

She finally sighed and said, "Don't get me wrong. I'm trying to keep my promise from last year. I'm just asking. Do you want my swimsuit to come off?"

I shook my head. "No. This is just a friendly backrub. I'm trying to be affectionate but not sexy."

"Yah. That's what I figured." She closed her eyes. "This is making me feel so good... I'm not even as hot as I used to be... So nice... Ouch!"

"Huh? Did that hurt?"

"Oh no, not you! It was a memory, from a long time ago. One boy was holding down my back, pressing down on my back, and another was pinching my ass. Just a memory..."

"My gosh... Sounds pretty brutal. Were you attacked? Did you know them?"

"Oh, I knew them... Melanie does too... Oh, that feels so nice... Melanie knows them too. They were at her birthday party, when she turned eighteen."

"Oh..."

"They were pinching her ass too, a lot. They kept insisting on kissing the birthday girl, and then pinching her ass when they caught her. I remember laughing, being glad it wasn't me and laughing at Melanie when she got her ass pinched."

"My gosh Patricia..."

"I saw it too, her bare ass I mean, after the party. I caught Melanie unexpectedly in her bedroom changing right after the party. Her ass was a bright pink from all the pinching..."

I moved to work the muscles in her lower back. Patricia sighed in contentment and closed her eyes again. "Oh, that feels so nice Eric... I remember laughing, laughing at Melanie's pink ass. My nickname for her that year was Melanoma. I remember seeing her pink ass and calling her Melanoma..."

I could feel Patricia's muscles relaxing under my massage. "That wasn't very nice."

Patricia sighed. "No, it wasn't, was it?"

"No, not at all."

She nodded. "In fact, it was cruel. I've been cruel to Melanie all my life, haven't I?"

"Patricia, she does forgive you. She wants the war to end."

"Really? She has been very sweet to me this trip. Oh, that feels so nice. I thought I'd have to fight to have some alone-time with you. My parents thought I'd have to fight for it too. But Melanie's been very generous... gracious... Oh, that feels so nice... Eric?"

"Yah?"

"Will you massage down my coccyx? Eric, I'm not trying to ask for sex... but will you rub my tailbone?"